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"The tremendous growth we have seen in 2004 means we have exceeded
all previous record totals," said ST's Home Entertainment Group
GM Christos Lagomichos. "The continued drive by governments
around the world toward analogue switch-off will see the market
for digital STBs grow even further in the coming years."
The rapid growth in the STB market is illustrated by the speed
at which the landmark total of 200 million units has been reached.
ST announced it had shipped 100 million MPEG decoders to STB manufacturers
in early 2003, some 8 years after first entering the market. In
contrast, the second 100 million units have been shipped in just
the following two years.
"ST has led the market for MPEG-2 decoders for many years
and in 2004 collected 66 per cent of the merchant market revenues
from dedicated MPEG-2 STB silicon devices," said Michelle Abraham,
Principal Analyst at In-Stat. "We forecast that the total market
for digital STBs will grow to 91 million units in 2005 and 130 million
units in 2008."
ST continues to service this demand by developing innovative products
that further reduce the overall bill of materials of the set-top
box.
Complementing the comprehensive range of MPEG-2 decoders, ST includes
satellite, cable, and terrestrial tuner and demodulator devices
in the product portfolio. These devices convert the broadcast signal
into the digital MPEG-2 stream.
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